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[springer5]

Hello

I'm totally new to understanding royal navy service records and I'm hoping someone with more experience can help get me started.

I've attached the record of my great uncle Harry, and I have some questions about it.

1. Victory 1,2,3 and 4
Were these all shore based station?
Were they all at Portsmouth?

2. Shore bases folowed by other names in brackets
About 2/3 of the way down it states St. Angelo (Duncan), then later Excellent (St. Fagan). I know that St. Angelo and Excellent were both shore bases. Does this mean his time was split between a shore base and ship (in brackets), or does the shore base followed by a bracketed name have another specific meaning?

3. In 1937 it says Harry was on "Boscawen (Bleswedd)", as far as I can make out(?). I can 't find any shore station called that or a ship called Blesswedd (or similar)

I'd really appreciate any help in understanding how these records are generally formatted and what/where some of these place are.

Also is there a good reference for future use that anyone can point me towards so that I can get the hang of this for myself?

Thanks very much for any help at all.

Neal

[PhiloNauticus]

To answer your questions –
Victory – was the shore barracks at Portsmouth.  The numbers were just for accounting purposes

Shore bases with names in brackets – smaller ships did not carry any admin staff, so all their paperwork, pay etc was carried out by a shore base, referred to as a ‘parent’. So, where you see, for example, Victory (Enchantress), it meant that he was serving onboard the Enchantress, but Victory barracks was looking after the admin work

Boscawen (Bleswedd) – Boscawen was the shore base at Portland – the name in brackets is actually Cherwell.  This was an armed trawler employed on Fishery Protection duties

I presume you have the details of the various ships listed (Tiger / Enchantress / Royal Sovereign / Boreas / Duncan /Keppel / St Fagan / Cherwell) ? and the shore bases?